Full Moon in Virgo March 11, 2009

Full Moon in Virgo You stand there, and I’ll stand over here, exactly opposite you. What do you see? Notice any differences? Similarities? What about me both irritates and intrigues you? What makes you want to change, stretch and grow? How are you feeling inspired to create or motivated to destroy? In astrological parlance, an opposition is an aspect that showcases the differences between two signs, highlighting the extremes of each sign involved.

Oppositions are known as “hard” aspects, because the energetic they create can be tense and stressful. Yet oppositions also have the potential to blend and integrate completely different energies in a new way that creates a more wholistic, complete expression than if each sign were on its own. An opposition is both a challenge and an opportunity. Are we willing to stretch and grow? To take a little Fool’s leap and do something different?

This Full Moon in Virgo offers us up a distinct menu of choices with an opposition involving the Sun, Uranus and Saturn. In one corner we have the Moon in Virgo, signifying our collective mood and the feeling tone in the air right now. With the Moon in Virgo, we are interested in the details of life, the mundane, the practical. Our bodies, our health, our dry cleaning and all the little errands that once completed, will make our lives run just a little bit more smoothly.

The Moon in Virgo lasts for another day or so, and happens to be right up next to the planet Saturn, which will remain in Virgo until the Fall of 2009. Saturn next to, (or conjunct), the Moon, makes us particularly alert to and aware of Saturn’s qualities at this time. Saturn is the planet who teaches us about: patience, commitment, persistence, stability, structure and tradition. But also, limitation, fear, constriction, anxiety and endings. We feel Saturn today, like a breath (or perhaps a big wind), swirling around us, we are attuned to Saturn’s presence more sharply. Look to Virgo planets, or the house cusp of Virgo in your chart to see where this lunation falls and gain more clues as to how it effects you in particular.

But the Moon and Saturn are just one part of the story. For the full picture we need to turn to the planets opposing the Moon and Saturn. So if we look to the other side, and the far, far reaches of space, we can reach out to those planets sitting directly opposite the Moon and Saturn, and there we find two rather interesting characters: the Sun and Uranus. There they are, sitting side by side….Can you see this funky duo? The Sun, who lights up our lives, feeds our soul, and gives us a sense of meaning and purpose? The Sun shines, radiant and alive, full of potential.

There close to the Sun, by about two zodiacal degrees, is the wackiest planetary body in the zodiac, that trickster, fool and radical change expert, Uranus. So there they are, these two powerhouse planets, moving in their own special way, vibrant and alive, and shimmering right now with a watery Piscean light. The sign of Pisces brings us closer to god, and god in the Pisces sense is whatever that means for us individually. This isn’t some kind of organized religion thing, there’s no intermediary, no morality, no right and wrong. We either feel it or we don’t with Pisces.

Pisces is pure faith, devotion and mystery. Now imagine what that means with Uranus dancing through this sign right now (and for the next year or so, as we near the end of Uranus’ cycle through Pisces). Pretty weird right? Maybe unexpected in a completely perfect way, as we sense a certain “rightness” in what is coming to us at this time in our lifes. We can’t explain, delineate or define it, really. Not to ourselves or anyone else. This is an experience that must be felt, intuited, gently grasped. This is not Virgo’s clarity, order and routine. This is different. So they stand, face to face, or back to back, opposite.

Earthy and real and practical, getting the work done, Virgo says, I’ve got a purpose, I know how to help, let me do my work. Pisces says, I inspire, I seed the work you will do in the world. I bring, the magic, mystery and life essence, the spark that feeds the flame of creativity and life purpose. Right now Virgo and Pisces are doing this opposition dance, offering us the chance to feel and witness the differences between them, to see ourselves stretch out between these polar opposites, and to imagine what it means to alchemically blend these energies in a new form, a new way. As we respond to the challenge, we have the potential to use both the span of our vision and the work of our hands to together create the future we imagine.

Saturn’s Garden Postcript June 30, 2008

Saturn’s Garden Postcript

“I walk by your garden every day, it’s so beautiful”. “Gorgeous”. “What kind of roses are those?”
I’m in a strange sort of Saturn transit after glow. Since last fall, Saturn has been smack on top of my Sun in the early signs of Virgo. But just three days ago, Saturn moved from the very personal three degrees of my sun sign, and towards four degrees of Virgo, which will soon turn to five, growing farther and farther away from my sun, the planet that astrologically makes me, essentially me.

What a visit I’ve had with Saturn this time. Such an odd sense of humor that ringed planet has, to say the least. The garden I worked in all fall, dedicating it to this Saturn transit, and patiently planting, and weeding and watering, has been blooming in wonderful waves after waves of life. My motives for working in the garden were purely selfish, I wanted to create beauty, get some exercise and be in nature. In all of these things I was successful, and I paid my Saturn dues. I worked hard, digging, weeding, watering, and I worked with a rhythm, that regular beat that Saturn likes. Returning again and again, but not too much, to add water and nutrients and make sure the plants got the sun they needed to grow.
But unexpectedly, in an almost (gasp), Uranian way, Saturn traveling over my 11th house sun in Virgo somehow translated my personal garden project into a gift for my neighborhood. On busy weekend days, as I watered and weeded, neighbors stopped by to tell me how they liked my sweet peas, which reminded them of when they were children. Others asked what kind of roses I grew, and some simply waved, smiled and called out “beautiful”. My favorite garden incident actually happened when I wasn’t home. My boyfriend said he looked out the window and saw a little girl of about eight riding her bicycle in front of our house. She stopped, got off her bike and leaned it against our fence, and then stuck her nose deep into the pink sweet peas climbing the fence. He said it looked as though she anticipated the smell of the flowers, and he thought she had probably done this very same thing before, as if our house was a special sweet smelling stop on her way home.
All the time I spent this year to become a new kind of Virgo, a non-doormat, relaxed kind of Virgo, a self-esteem serving Virgo, a Virgo with verve. Well, it kind of paid off, and paid off in the most Virgoish in the 11th house of ways, as the pleasure I brought myself in my own self-serving way, was multiplied when I realized I was also serving others.
This is one Saturn lesson I won’t forget. That is isn’t necessary to give and serve from a place of struggle and martyrdom, that service can mean pleasing oneself first and watching that pleasure ripple out like a rock skipped cleanly across the surface of a lake.
(For Part I of my Saturn in Virgo story see Saturn’s Garden on this blogsite)

Saturn’s Garden: Learning to be Perfectly Imperfect with Saturn in Virgo April 11, 2008

Saturn’s Garden: Learning to be Perfectly Imperfect with Saturn in Virgo

I’m in love with my garden. The rich warm purple pansies, sunburst marigolds and Mexican dahlias. As I water I repeat the names of my plants like a mantra. I fuss and putter, wrapping the sweet peas gently around the fence, picking bits of debris from the soil. My yard is full of life, overflowing with good smells and color, soon to be bursting with the taste of fresh vegetables and edible flowers.

With Saturn currently sitting exactly on my sun in Virgo by transit, I can’t think of a better way to delve more deeply into the mysteries of one of the earthiest earth planets, than by immersing myself in the beauty of the natural world.

My garden brings me a distinct awareness of the cycles of life, the way the seasons, even here in California, are signaled by specific markers. The boundaries of time set the tone for what lives and dies in nature. What blooms in spring won’t survive the winter, and the heat and light of summer welcome a whole new community of plants. Each flower, tree and bush has a particular signature, a color, shape, texture, smell all it’s own. There’s nothing wrong with the daffodil bulbs that only bloom in Spring, because this is the nature of daffodils.
The planet Saturn also teaches us about cycles, time and limits, defining the seasons of our lives, introducing experiences and lessons that differ depending on whether we are seven years old or 58. Saturn tells us, through our limitations, who we really are.

My roses, five feet tall, and in multiple colors and varieties, bring home Saturn’s lessons in the most paradoxical way. In January I pruned the bare thorny branches back to half their size, and yet almost overnight it seems, these branches have turned lush and green, wild with leaves. Any day now I expect to see the first buds of what will be beautiful, sweet smelling flowers in full bloom by May.

Saturn acts also in this way, pruning from our lives the dead, dormant branches that can sometimes limit our full potential. Cutting back on areas that aren’t working, no matter how much we might like them to be. As we learn to trust the guidance of Saturn, and more gracefully release and let go of those areas, people and experiences that need pruning, it becomes possible to become more fully alive and present with what is left to us.
When Saturn aspects the Sun by transit, our sense of self and identity is shaped and honed. We see both who we are and who we are not.
Saturn aspecting the Moon, teaches us about the unique way we express and experience our emotions, our relationship to nurturing. Aspecting Venus,  Saturn  shows us our limitations and patterns related to relationship. With Mars we define and clarify how we use our energy, will and passion. Mercury  helps us gain more definition around communication patterns. Thus, each planet that Saturn touches comes away with a deeper sense of what its gifts are, of what its true nature and way of being brings into the world.

Patience is my biggest lesson in the garden, learning how to wait for sweet peas to flower, for corn to grow big enough to harvest. I want to plant, water and weed right now, and reap and harvest tomorrow.  Saturn demands that I do a little work everyday, parceling my energy out slowly and steadily, rather than in big bursts all at once. If I spent all day watering my plants but then neglected to water again for two weeks, I’d likely kill all but my most hardy plants.  To work with the cycles of nature I need to pace myself,  watering slowly over time, waiting for the plants to grow at their own rate, rather than trying to get them to grow according to my schedule.

Besides conjuncting my Sun, Saturn is also moving through my 11th house, which rules groups, friends and community and goals and visions for the future. I’m trying to welcome the gifts of limitation, pruning and patience into my 11th house. In keeping with Saturn’s influence, I’m trying very hard. I’m not sure if I’m really succeeding, because Saturn conjunct your sun can feel like being trapped under a heavy, immovable boulder. It’s hard to really get any perspective when you’re buried beneath a large rock.

So rather than struggling against what cannot be changed, I come to know what is real. Observing the particular texture and color of rock, the scent and sound of it, I grow familiar with this influence. Gradually what I perceive as a barrier becomes part of me, as I merge with the stone force, learning to move with it, rather than resisting its pressure.

Saturn slows me down to the speed of mountains, making me notice every detail, every small moment, attuning me to the essence of what blocks me. Saturn demands that I work muscles even when they hurt, slowly and patiently building muscle mass, not giving up. Saturn wants us to continue to do the hard thing even when we see no visible result from our efforts.

Like any good Virgo, I’m  trying to do this transit “just right”. I want to emerge from Saturn conjunct my sun in the 11th house having mastered the art of friendship and community. I want to have a brilliant plan for my future, and to successfully have met all my goals. In short, I want to achieve perfection.

Perfection is a word we Virgo’s have a love/hate relationship with. On the one hand we worship at the altar of this unachievable and inhuman quality, striving, like no other sign, to do everything just right. In the process, we manage to do quite a lot, and do it well. Our downfall emerges when our focus becomes fixed and rigid, and we fail to recognize what we have done right, what has been accomplished, searching only to do it “more better”, to be more “right”.

Saturn transiting through Virgo forces one to sit with the discomfort of imperfection. We are invited to learn how to fully embrace the thoroughly imperfect experience of being human, recognizing the raw beauty in our cracks and flaws. Remembering, in the immortal words of Leonard Cohen, to “Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything, That’s how the light gets in.”

Virgo’s Saturn September 11, 2007

Saturn moved from Leo into Virgo on September 2, 2007. As an astrologer and a Virgo, I found myself strangely excited to witness this not very frequent planetary phenomena. Strange, because excited is not the first feeling that generally comes to mind when astrologers think of Saturn or Virgo. Saturn transits usually include words like this: persistence, patience, commitment, fortitude, limitations and lessons. Virgo words tend to run along the same lines: organized, discerning, systematic and detail oriented.

Not quite a picture of verve, daring and excitement is it? Yet when Saturn in Virgo is placed in the context of where we stand now, as a species, facing the decisions and challenges that we are confronted with at a global level, a whole new perspective begins to emerge. Saturn was last in the sign of Virgo in the mid-1970’s when environmental awareness, and alternative medicine first begin to enter the mass consciousness as important issues. Saturn’s current transit through Virgo, during a time when we face environmental breakdown, and global epidemics reveals new and interesting sides of this sixth sign of the zodiac. In the current age, Virgo begins to emerge as an earthy superheroine, made for our times, poised to swoop in and rescue us with gardening skills and homeopathic remedies.

Like all the best superhero’s, Virgo’s story starts with a myth. A long, long time ago, when the Greeks still believed in the Gods, a conflict arose between Gods and Humans. The short form of that story is this: the god Prometheus created humans, gave them fire and was brutally punished by his divine brothers and sisters. The gods chose a unique punishment for the humans involved, sending a box disguised as a gift to Pandora, a mortal woman. Pandora, as we all know, opened this gift from the gods and unleashed a tsunami of war, disease, and suffering. Only hope remained, and stupidly or bravely, we’ve been living on it ever since.
The unpleasant after effects of Pandora’s box led the gods to vacate their home on the earth and head towards the relative safety of the sky, where we know them today as the planets (Sun-Apollo, Moon-Artemis, etc. etc.)
Only one goddess remained behind and this was Astraea. Astraea brought an earthy form of justice to humanity. Her work was teaching humans how to live in harmony with the earth. Astraea taught the ancient Greeks about the changing seasons of nature, the flow of life cycles, and what is most essential to let go of for the sake of survival. This discriminating quality can be seen in her association with innocence and purity.

Astraea was the very last of the gods to leave the earth for the heavens. She stayed behind to serve humans, teaching them what they needed to know about life on earth. Astraea’s mission was to acclimate humans to the earth plane, grounding them in their new world.

Astraea is the goddess that the sign of Virgo is most associated with. Virgo, in her highest form, holds the essence of Astraea’s gifts. These gifts are qualities that in modern times have been distilled down to these rather boring Virgo keywords: discriminating, service-oriented, humble and practical.
In the current age, as we wrestle with a planetary psychology that is out of sync with the natural world, drowning in our own excess (which we had the chance to see clearly during Saturn’s recent passage through Leo), we come to find respite in these Astraea/Virgo qualities.
Uranus’ current passage through Virgo’s opposing sign, Pisces, has been shaking up the roots and limitations of Virgo’s everywhere. There is a new kind of Virgo emerging, one that we can recognize in the incredible surge of interest in environmentalism and holistic health which has emerged in recent years. This embodiment of Virgo serves to create a bridge of connection between humans and the earth, to invoke and remind of us natural law, helping us discern what is necessary for a right relationship with our planetary home, and what we need to let go of in order to work with the laws of nature.
As Saturn settles into its Virgo home, the embodiment of this energy has a chance to ground itself, to display its mastery, to share and serve humanity as Astraea once did.
Now is the time for all those with Virgo in their chart to assess how they might best serve the flow of natural law, to purify themselves of self-criticism and censorship and invoke the graceful knowledge of Astraea.
Virgo’s everywhere are engaging in Saturnian lessons about perfectionism, criticism and what it means to maintain both the physical body, and the living body of the planet.
All those with Virgo planets are learning through the patient discipline of Saturn how to distill the best of Virgo, while leaving the more self-destructive qualities behind, embodying the essentially purifying nature of Virgo energy.
The generation born from roughly 1966-1972 has Pluto and Uranus in Virgo and as such, is particularly positioned to powerfully manifest this energy. As Saturn begins to move forward through Virgo and conjunct this natal planetary alignment, this generation has the opportunity, and will feel the pressure to realign themselves to provide Astraean-like service to the earth. This transit also promises to help reground the collective as a whole in the natural world, reminding us of the earth laws we are asked to follow here, and connecting us more deeply with the interrelationship between all forms of life: plant, animal and human. Our relationship to food, medicine and exercise are also poised to undergo Saturn’s sobering changes as the transit unfolds. These are all areas that will become of more concern and interest to us as we gain more insight into the mysteries of Saturn in Virgo.
Astraea, the goddess, promised to return to humans once they had learned a thing or two about living in right relationship with the earth. Perhaps this Saturn transit through Virgo will open us up to receiving the divine guidance we need to navigate through this time of great transition.